ATHENS: Greece has arrested a suspected crime boss with the underworld title of “vor v zakone” — or thief in law — wanted by Russia under an Interpol red notice, police officials said on Wednesday.
Europe has stepped up its fight against Russian-speaking organized crime groups since the assassination of a clan leader in 2013 in Moscow triggered a power struggle among the crime network.
Europol, the EU-wide police liaison agency, says the “vory v zakone” (thieves in law) network is a tightly-structured type of criminal organization originating in the underworld of the Soviet Union, which fell apart in 1991.
Greek police arrested the 51-year old Georgian, whose name has not been released, on Tuesday after receiving a tipoff that he was planning to travel to Athens. A red notice had been issued by Interpol against him at the request of Russia.
He was arrested at a restaurant in central Athens where he had been attending a dinner with 13 other men, among them a 58-year old man who was later also arrested for gun possession.
A third man was arrested for lacking a residence permit and refusing to undergo an identity check.
The other men at the dinner were briefly detained and then freed.
Greek police arrest suspected crime boss sought by Russia
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Greek police arrest suspected crime boss sought by Russia
- Europol says the “vory v zakone” (thieves in law) network is a tightly-structured type of criminal organization
- Greek police arrested the 51-year old Georgian at a restaurant in central Athens
Clashes, arrests mark start of German far-right AfD congress
- Around 600 AfD delegates began a two-day meeting with authorities expecting up to 80,000 people to join demonstrations
- AfD notched up its best EU election result since its creation in 2013, winning 16% of the vote to take second place
ESSEN, Germany: Clashes between hooded demonstrators and police on Saturday marked the start of a party congress of Germany’s far-right AfD, weeks after it scored record EU election results despite multiple scandals.
About 1,000 police deployed in the western city of Essen as around 600 delegates began a two-day meeting with authorities expecting up to 80,000 people to join demonstrations.
“Several disruptive violent actions occurred in the Ruettenscheld quarter. Demonstrators, some of them hooded, attacked security forces. Several arrests were made,” the police of North Westphalia, where Essen is located, said on X.
A top regional official had warned that “potentially violent far-left troublemakers” could be among the protesters.
“We are here and we will stay,” said AfD co-president Alice Weidel, opening the congress and drawing sustained applause.
“We have the right like all political parties — to hold a congress,” she added.
Adding to the security forces’ headache is the Euro 2024 football tournament, with the last 16 clash between hosts Germany and Denmark taking place Saturday in Dortmund — not far from Essen.
In early June the Alternative for Germany (AfD) notched up its best European Union election result since its creation in 2013, winning 16 percent of the vote to take second place.
It was behind the main conservative CDU-CSU opposition bloc but ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), which is in power at the head of a troubled three-party coalition.
Buoyed by a surge in immigration and a weak performance by Europe’s top economy, the party hit as high as 22 percent in opinion polls in January.
However their support faltered amid a welter of scandals that mainly implicated their top EU election candidate, Maximilian Krah.
“I believe that the party has learnt a lot in recent months and will be very careful when we put forward leading candidates in the future,” party co-president Weidel, who is standing for re-election, told the Politico news outlet Thursday.
Krah initially faced allegations of suspicious links to Russia and China.
He then sparked widespread anger by telling an Italian newspaper that not every member of the Nazis’ notorious SS was “automatically a criminal.”
The comments prompted the AfD’s expulsion from its far-right group, Identity and Democracy (ID), in the European Parliament, in which France’s National Rally (RN) and Italy’s League had been its partners.
While the AfD has sought to shift the blame for all its recent woes onto Krah, there were signs of problems even before.
The RN had already distanced itself from the AfD after reports emerged in January that the German party had discussed the expulsion of immigrants and “non-assimilated” citizens at a meeting with extremists.
The reports caused shock in Germany and triggered weeks of mass protests.
Following the EU polls, the AfD ejected Krah from the delegation it sends to Brussels but the ID group does not seem ready to re-admit them, leaving the party searching for new partners.
At the congress, delegates will be asked to vote on a motion proposing an end to the practice of having two party co-presidents.
Instead, there will be just one president alongside a general secretary.
If the motion is approved, then Tino Chrupalla — the party’s second co-president alongside Weidel — could lose his position, German media have reported.
He has been highly critical of Krah, meaning he could be targeted by the disgraced politician’s supporters.
Both Chrupalla and Weidel have backed introducing the post of secretary general as they believe it could help professionalize the AfD ahead of Germany’s 2025 parliamentary elections.
The congress comes ahead of three key elections in September in states that once formed part of communist East Germany, and where the AfD has been topping opinion polls.
Afghan women’s rights an internal issue, Taliban government says before UN-led talks
- Civil society representatives, including from women’s rights groups, will attend meetings with the international envoys and UN officials on Tuesday, after the official talks
KABUL: Taliban authorities said on Saturday that demands over women’s rights were “Afghanistan’s issues” to solve, ahead of United Nations-led engagement talks where the exclusion of Afghan women has sparked outcry.
The Taliban government, which has imposed restrictions on women since seizing power in 2021 that the UN has described as “gender apartheid,” will send its first delegation to the third round of talks starting in Qatar on Sunday.
Civil society representatives, including from women’s rights groups, will attend meetings with the international envoys and UN officials on Tuesday, after the official talks.
Rights groups have condemned the exclusion of Afghan women from the main meetings and the lack of human rights issues on the agenda.
The Taliban authorities “acknowledge the issues about women,” government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul on the eve of the latest talks.
“But these issues are Afghanistan’s issues,” said Mujahid, who will lead the delegation.
“We are working to find a logical path toward solutions inside Afghanistan so that, God forbid, our country doesn’t again fall into conflict and discord.”
He said the Taliban government would represent all of Afghanistan at the meetings and, given their authority, should be the only Afghans at the table.
“If Afghans participate through several channels, it means we are still scattered, our nation is still not unified,” he said.
The talks were launched by the UN in May 2023 and aim to increase international coordination on engagement with the Taliban authorities, who ousted a Western-backed government when they swept to power.
The Taliban government has not been officially recognized by any state and the international community has wrestled with its approach to Afghanistan’s new rulers, with women’s rights issues a sticking point for many countries.
Taliban authorities were not invited to the first talks in Doha last year and refused to attend the second conference, demanding that they be the sole Afghan representatives to the exclusion of invited civil society groups.
That condition has been met for the third round.
Mujahid reiterated that the Taliban government sought positive relations with all countries.
However, he added that “no major or key discussions” would take place in Doha and that the meeting was an opportunity to exchange views, particularly with Western countries.
The agenda will include combating narcotics and economic issues, key topics for authorities in the impoverished country.
“We have hurdles blocking economic development, which should be removed,” Mujahid said.
“If the economy were fine, then all other issues could be solved.”
Far right scents power as tense France braces for snap vote
- On Saturday, voting begins in France’s overseas territories that span the globe
PARIS: A divided France braced Saturday for high-stakes parliamentary elections that could see the anti-immigrant and euroskeptic party of Marine Le Pen sweep to power in a historic first.
The candidates ended their frantic three-week campaigns at midnight Friday, with political activity banned until the first round of voting on Sunday.
On Saturday, voting begins in France’s overseas territories that span the globe, with residents of the tiny archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, located off the coast of Canada, casting their ballots from 1000 GMT.
They will be followed by voters in France’s islands in the Caribbean and the South American territory of French Guiana. Voting will later start in territories in the Pacific and then in the Indian Ocean before it gets underway on the mainland on Sunday.
Most polls show that Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is on course to win the largest number of seats in the 577-member National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, although it remains unclear if the party will secure an outright majority.
A high turnout is predicted and final opinion polls have given the RN between 35 percent and 37 percent of the vote, against 27.5-29 percent for the left-wing New Popular Front alliance and 20-21 percent for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp.
On Monday, Macron plans to convene a government meeting to decide the further course of action ahead of the second round of voting on July 7, government sources told AFP.
France is heading for a year of political chaos and confusion with a hung Assembly, said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head at Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy.
“There is no precedent in recent French politics for such an impasse,” Rahman said.
Macron’s decision to call snap elections after the RN’s victory in European Parliament elections this month stunned friends and foes and sparked uncertainty in Europe’s second-biggest economy.
The Paris stock exchange suffered its biggest monthly decline in two years in June, dropping by 6.4 percent, according to figures released on Friday.
In an editorial, French daily Le Monde said it was time to mobilize against the far right.
“Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries gradually being undone,” it said.
Some 49 million French are eligible to vote.
Brice Teinturier, head of the Ipsos polling firm, said there were two tendancies coming out of the campaign.
“One is a dynamic of hope” with left-wing and RN supporters believing that “there can be a change.”
But Teinturier also highlighted “the negative politicization, the fear, the dread caused” by the RN and the hard-left France Unbowed party which is part of the left-wing coalition.
Macron apparently hoped to catch political opponents off guard by presenting voters with a crucial choice about France’s future, but observers say he might have lost his gamble.
Many have pointed to a spike in hate speech, intolerance and racism during the charged campaign. A video of two RN supporters verbally assaulting a black woman has gone viral in recent days.
Speaking in Brussels late Thursday, Macron deplored “racism or anti-Semitism.”
Support for Macron’s centrist camp collapsed during the campaign, while left-wing parties put their bickering aside to form the New Popular Front, in a nod to an alliance founded in 1936 to combat fascism.
Support for the far right has surged, with analysts saying Le Pen’s years-long efforts to clean up the image of a party co-founded by a former Waffen SS member have paid off.
“Victory is within our grasp, so let’s seize this historic opportunity and get out and vote!” Le Pen wrote on X on Friday, vowing to bolster purchasing power and “curb insecurity and immigration.”
Under Macron, France has been one of Ukraine’s main Western backers since Russia invaded in 2022.
But Le Pen and her 28-year-old lieutenant, party chief Jordan Bardella, have said they would scale down French support for Ukraine, by ruling out the deployment of ground troops and long-range missiles.
If the far right obtains an absolute majority, Bardella could become prime minister in a tense “cohabitation” with Macron.
His party’s path to victory could be blocked if the left and center-right join forces against the RN in the second round.
A defiant Macron has stood by his decision to call the elections, while warning voters that a win by the far right or hard left could spark a “civil war” in France.
He has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his second term until 2027, no matter which party wins.
China urges Taiwanese to visit ‘without worry’ despite threats
- Beijing earlier published judicial guidelines on criminal punishments for supporters of Taiwanese independence
- Many Taiwanese travel to mainland China to work, study or do business
BEIJING: China has urged Taiwanese to visit the mainland “without the slightest worry,” condemning the island authorities’ decision to raise their travel alert level after Beijing threats targeting independence advocates.
Last week, Beijing published judicial guidelines on criminal punishments for supporters of Taiwanese independence, including the death penalty for “particularly serious” cases involving “diehard” advocates.
In response, Taiwan’s government on Thursday urged the public to avoid “unnecessary travel” to mainland China and Hong Kong.
It also raised its travel warning for China to the second-highest “orange” level.
But Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for a Chinese body in charge of Taiwan affairs, said in a statement late Friday that the new judicial directives “are aimed solely at the very small number of supporters of ‘Taiwan independence’, who are engaged in malicious acts and utterances.”
“The vast majority of Taiwan compatriots involved in cross-strait exchanges and cooperation do not need to have the slightest worry when they come to or leave mainland China,” she said.
“They can arrive in high spirits and leave fully satisfied with their stay,” she added.
Mainland China and Taiwan split following the Chinese civil war that ended in 1949.
Since then, China has claimed the democratic island as part of its territory. It says it wants “peaceful reunification” but has refused to rule out using force to bring it under its control.
Beijing has not conducted top-level communications with Taipei since 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Tsai Ing-wen became the island’s leader. It has branded her successor, President Lai Ching-te, a “dangerous separatist.”
“The DPP authorities have fabricated excuses to deceive the people on the island” and “incite confrontation and opposition,” Zhu said in her statement.
Many Taiwanese travel to mainland China to work, study or do business.
